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این یک عنوان است.

This is a caption.
Jafari’s thought

She allows all the passengers to board and as the metro doors are about to close and the horn sounds, she gets on the women’s car. The sound of the women vendors can be heard from every corner. One is using one hand to open her scarf to show her neckline and with the other hand, she displays the different colors of scarves to the sitting and standing passengers, struggling to be heard over the constant rustling of nylon bags. On the other side, a vendor is pulling on a pair of stretchy pants, showing that they come in all sizes from 36 to 48. Another one has placed a variety of makeup items in a compact box and insists on drawing a line on one of the ladies’ hand to show the quality of her eye pencil. Necklaces, falafel, flowers, loofahs, kitchen towels, headphones, underwear, travel blankets, everything is sold in this half car and she stands with her pack of gum, silently observing the people

• How many gums?

• A package of 1000 tomans.

• Do you have a card reader?

• No

He says this and gets off the train. When getting off, a mother is getting on with her son. The mother pulls her child towards herself and goes to the side, and stops at the threshold for a few seconds to make sure her son doesn’t collide with her as she is moving. The son nonchalantly gets off. The doors close and the train starts moving. Maybe on the next train, there will be an empty space to hear his voice in all the commotion.

This is one of the everyday stories of children who get lost in the chaos of our restless lives. It’s a story of justified abuse that we easily overlook because it has become normal for us. Everything about these Afghan child laborers is either a sign of compassion or an irrational hatred that consumes our minds. Their humanity has long been lost to us and we see them as subjects to satisfy our previous notions of happiness, reminding ourselves how fortunate we are not to be as miserable as they are. We go to the bathhouse and think their different accents are a sign of danger, or an excuse to mock them; “anything we don’t understand must be dangerous.” We see their fathers as stern, proud Aryan breadwinners and their mothers as helpless creatures who bear children out of necessity and lack of choice. To our completely closed eyes, they all look the same; a shapeless mass that the city must gather and send to the border, or when our compassion strikes, they kiss our hands

The prevailing thought in society about Afghan child labor is that it is continuously and justifiably reproduced. A country that has climbed six steps to 128 in terms of freedom of expression according to “Reporters Without Borders” in 2015, while Iran remains at 173 with a significant difference. This hospitable country, according to the “National Network of Hazara People,” only considers 3% of all child labor as the target group of its welfare organization, which mostly includes 30% of Iranian child labor, not 70% of Afghan children. Furthermore, children born to an Afghan man and an Iranian woman remain without identity documents according to Article 976 of the Civil Code in Iran, while according to official statistics, at least 30,000 marriages have taken place in this manner and in repeated posts, all this customary and legal violence seems to go beyond the silent speeches of UNESCO’s “chairs” by Eugen Yunesco.

We have become accustomed to a life filled with exclusion and violence, and we have taken belittlement as a lifeline. We have been living like this for so long that we have become used to it. As long as we cannot find the independent identity of Afghan children from the burden of collective responsibility that we justify by emphasizing the ugliness and sometimes beautification of public spaces, we will continue to struggle in the pit that we have dug ourselves into. We must accept that Afghan child laborers are trying to make a living by participating in various false occupations, and this is a burden that weighs heavily on their shoulders and they are not responsible for it in any way.

Perhaps working in non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, that operate with precise needs assessments and a humanitarian perspective, and striving to change the citizenship laws in Iran, could be a small but impactful step towards easing the burden on the weak yet resilient child laborers in Afghanistan. Increasing education on accepting equal rights for Afghan child laborers, who are an undeniable part of our society today, along with empowering them for personal growth, may help alleviate the daily humiliation and violence they face.